


Time Is Dancing

by Lovely_Lights



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Original Character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:50:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13007184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovely_Lights/pseuds/Lovely_Lights
Summary: Hello love, for you I have so many words. But I, I forget where we were.





	Time Is Dancing

  
If you asked Yousef, well, Yousef’s not an overly intelligent man, at least not like her. He sometimes thinks that life is a cliché - you blink, it's gone. Hell, maybe he's a cliché.

If you asked Sana she would say that had been born into incompatibility, completely opposite. Yousef is everything Sana isn’t. It’s even more obvious now when he’s miles away, tucked into Turkish streets. The line between them has become a bloody gash.

And that’s the problem with them. Sana wears black, every little piece of dust collecting, every imperfection weighing down. You learn grace, with a gentle wave of dusting your fingers lightly over yourself, picking yourself up again. The problem with the white of Yousef’s shirts is that they show everything, every wrinkle, your heart is all over your shirt bleeding out and you can’t hide. And Sana and Yousef can’t seem to meet somewhere in the middle, somewhere in the grays of dusk, not like the last time Yousef wrapped her in his arms and felt the desire to pray.  
  
Sometimes she finds herself despising Yousef. She’ll see a post on instagram, hear chatter from the boys as they lodge around her living room making videos, it mocks her heart and frustrated tears. But why would he miss Norway, she muses bitterly. They had just been a beginning. Still, Sana can’t stop the rage that roars in her ribcage. She wants to scream angry accusing things, demand explanations. Though the reality is she knows them. Probably knows his reasons, his heart, more than the boys sprawled over her couch that miss him just as much. They had talked quietly of Allah and revelations in the quiet sanctuary of safety that their presence provided the other. She had witnessed his torn heart; the way he wrestled with his faith and how she thought it might choke him. And yet, when the text came that he was staying in Turkey indefinitely she couldn’t remember how to breathe.

Yousef thinks too much for his own good, and that’s another cliché. He thinks about the chemistry of life - of how his tears are a mix of electrolytes and salt, nothing unique, his heartache so easily explained away. How everything he does serves a purpose, a greater purpose than his selfish needs. He thinks of Allah, of a girl with dimples unshakable in her faith, of how the Qu’ran, heavy in his hands makes his heart feel light even after all this time. He thinks about genius and persistence, and about sacrifice and when does it all add up? He doesn't think he'll ever be able to figure it out. But he does when it feels like his lungs are being crushed and his stomach is in his throat and his heart is in pieces, lying on the ground and all he can repeat to himself is “and he found you lost and guided [you]”, he has never known anything truer.  
**  
**

“I’m going to go get a coffee.” Sana’s voice cracks out into the silence of the front office of the ward, echoing against the silence. Kari looks up from where she’s restocking one of the trays and smiles.

“Could you get me -?”

“Hazelnut latte, got it.” She smiles a pleased sound escaping her lips as she turns her attention back down to the tray. Sana quickly grabs her phone and wallet and shoves them into the pockets of her pale blue scrubs. The hospital is freezing in the morning and Sana blames the Norweigan summer for her thinking at 6:00 in the morning that she wouldn’t need a jacket. Sana weaves around the main halls, which are busier than the ward she’s interning in until she’s at the small coffee stand two floors below, tapping at her phone while she waits in line.

It’s not a good day but it’s not a bad day. She had been convinced to go over to Eva’s for a girl’s night the night before. They had all crowded in Eva’s bed whispering and giggling until 3:00 in the morning, the smell of popcorn filling up the room. It had been nice. That was until she woke up three hours later cursing herself and trying to force the sleep out of her eyes.

Her phone dings with a text from Noora.

_Don’t be mad._

Sana bristles immediately. She considers the text for a bit, clicking the button for the 5 th floor before she taps out a quick reply.

_What have you done?_

_Sana, you did the same for me._

Some unsettling sense of déjà vu is tugging the muscles in her shoulders taut. The doors to the elevator swing open. She’s about to open her mouth to complain to Kari about her meddling friend when the words catch in her throat.

_“Maybe that’s why society needs religion. Democracy isn’t built on the idea that everyone’s different. It’s built on the idea that all people are worth the same. And that idea doesn’t stem from science. But I don’t know if it helps to walk around and pretend that there are no prejudices. What you have to do is show what Islam is.”_

_His words had been assured as he spoken them into the night and Sana tried to understand why he struggled._

_“You’re actually a Muslim. You just say you’re not.”_

_“Unfortunately, I’m not.” She remembers how her heart, or perhaps it was her faith kept fighting his insistence. He was a better man than most._

“Yousef.” Sana says the words escaping her. She isn’t surprised when she sees his shoulders hunch from where he was leaning over to chat with Kari.

It’s him. She’s only seen the side of his face but the crinkles of his eyes when he smiles are the same, his hair is a bit more neat less unruly but the front of it is still kept longer than the back framing his cheeks.

There’s an uncomfortable silence, electricity coiling in the air as he turns around and they lock eyes for the first time in over a year. Sana isn’t sure what to feel much less do. Anger has always come quickly to her and she wants to unleash a year plus worth of resentment onto him and screech that he promised he fucking promised he’d be back, the other part of her wants to forget everything that has gone horribly wrong between them and sink into his arms.

“There’s Sana.” Kari says the same soft smile still on her lips, completely unaware.

“Sana.” His smile is hesitant barely ticking the corners of his lips.

“What are you doing here?” She asks abruptly. The words are coming tumbling out of her mouth, which is a surprise because Sana had felt her throat clench becoming sand paper and thought she wouldn’t be able to come up with even one single word at coming face to face with him.

He runs a hand through his hair. Tugging at the ends as he places his hand at the nape of his neck that same unsure smile still on his lips. The gesture is so familiar Sana can feel her heart jump as memories she’d refuse to entertain come flying to the surface.

“I -. Well, I asked Noora where I would be able to find you my flight landed late last night. Please, don’t be mad at her. She wasn’t sure if she should tell me but I insisted.” And Sana feels a slightly hysterical laugh bubble inside her because of course Yousef fucking Acar would be worried about someone else at all times.

“That didn’t answer my question.” Sana isn’t about to be thrown off by _anything_ much less the ghost of memories.

“Oh, yeah.” Distantly she can hear Kari excusing herself to make her rounds. Sana blinks and the rest of the room comes back into focus. She looks over at Kari whose gaze is questioning and she gives a simple nod before turning back to Yousef. She tries to calm her anger she’s at work she can’t cause a scene.

“I. Sana, I know that I don’t really have an excuse for my silence.” Her mouth tugs down in a furious scowl and she can’t stop herself from snapping.

“Clearly not, since you have a phone and they were made with the purpose to communicate with other people.” Yousef stands up straight then and stares at her before nodding his head.

He steps forward and Sana feels the tug to come closer and bask in his orbit, muscle memory is a traitorous thing.

He keeps walking and Sana refuses to look even when she hears his heavy footsteps pause.

“For what it’s worth. I’m glad to see you, Sana.” He continues walking. She refuses to move untll she hears the gentle close of the elevator doors. 

Sana see’s from her peripheral Kari walk back into the front room but the older woman stays quiet, allows her a moment of silence in the thunderstorm that is her heart. It works, after a few minuets in which Sana has walked around to sit at her desk she can’t hold onto the anger any longer and she just feels helpless and sad.

“Sana, I don’t know what’s going on but I think you need to speak to that boy.”

Sana shrugs, stacking some papers together to hide how her hands tremble.

“Sometimes to much time has passed to fix things and there’s nothing left to say.”

Kari steps up and claps her shoulder firmly.

“I’m sure _that_ will open up some conversations.” Sana looks over to where Kari is pointing at a battered black moleskin. She grabs the journal and wants to so badly throw it in the trash instead she opens to a random page. The writing is a bit slanted and messy and Sana has to concentrate on each word to make out exactly what they say.

_Dear Sana,_

_We haven’t talked in five months months and I still find myself regretting stopping our last conversation. But I had to stop you. I couldn’t take it. I might have thrown up at giving you an explanation, at just more meaningless words. So many words, why are there always so many? And now here I am just writing you words._

_But what I wanted to ask you more than anything. Is why do people hold onto things like faith or love?_

_I think you would have said hope. Your faith was always firm and steady like your smiles. You see, I think now you may have been onto something. But at the same time when our hope breaks this is what advances us. It’s what lends us to creativity and what inspires us. It’s what we lock away in our hearts and won’t tell a soul. I used to think it was the opposite of hope in so many ways but I think it’s just a different manifestation of it. It's dull and maybe doesn’t shine as brightly but it's always there. A constant amongst every other thing. To rely on when that love burns you up, when it's so painful._

_I think I’m lost at times. I understand that there is life outside of me and my heart and my philosophical pockets of brain matter. I understand that I may never figure it out. But I think I understand hope a bit more now. Hey, Sana I think you’re my constant I think if all else collapses he will keep me from collapsing. I think now more than ever we were made in pairs for a reason._

“Sana.” She looks up at Kari whose shaking her shoulder a small smile on her face. She can feel warm tear tracks on her cheeks.

“I-“

“Sana, what’s great about an internship and being your boss is that I get to tell you what to do. GO!” Sana scrambles a bit her thoughts running and she wishes she could slow them down. But she pushes herself up and grabs her phone as she races over to the elevator.

She clicks on the familiar contact, on the number she hasn’t called in over a year. It rings and she can feel her heart beating all over her body, her pulse jumping.

“Sana.” His voice finally answers her and she’s riddled with goose bumps at remembering the words he put down to paper. Words he breathed life into. Words for her and how could he ever think them meaningless. 

She can’t bring herself to speak the words catching in her throat. Yousef remains silent on the other line. Patient. She takes in a sharp breath and dares to be brave. 

“Allah, made our hearts familiar.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for @altfordeg in the yousana exchange.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I'm @thelovelylights on tumblr


End file.
